theodp writes: The WSJ catches up with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and his crusade to expose how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America. In Unlearning Liberty, Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website. What they share, lifelong Democrat Lukianoff says, is a view of 'harassment' so broad and so removed from its legal definition that 'literally every student on campus is already guilty.'

FIRE became involved in a situation at University of Wisconsin-Stout that was described in an earlier Slashdot story, Theater Professor's Firefly Poster Declared Threatening [slashdot.org]. The University backed down [youtube.com] (video) after FIRE's advocacy campaign on the Prof's behalf inspired author Neil Gaiman, along with Firefly actors Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin, to take to Twitter to encourage their millions of followers to contact the university with their support of free speech.